U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#221

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:51 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #220

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It didn't help that the urbanism activists in our area seem to consider parking garages to be a tool of the devil and protested any plans to build one in the area. So Alice wants to build a high-density housing tower without having to build a ten-story parking structure beneath it, and we prohibit Alice from doing that, even though Bob wants to build a ten-story parking structure right next to it, because we prohib…

It is certainly a place to start! Although in this case I never heard of a developer wanting to build a parking structure on their own (and don't know if existing code would have prevented them). It was always the city wanting to build an adjacent parking structure as part of revitalization efforts to extend the success of that neighborhood further down the street.

So part of this is the cart-horse inversion.

We have minimum parking requirements that produce an oversupply of parking, therefore parking is cheap, therefore building parking garages is unprofitable. If you don't mandate them, the cost of parking will increase until building parking garages is profitable, and then people will build parking garages (or have fewer cars, in places where that's practical).

This doesn't even increase costs. Right now someone is paying $3000/month for a $2500 apartment and a $500 parking space. Without the parking requirements you could get a $2500 apartment for $2500 and choose whether you want to pay the extra $500 for the parking space.

Not only that, this would make it cheaper to build more apartments, so then the $2500 apartment drops to $2250 from lower scarcity, which reduces the cost of apartment+parking space as well by not force-allocating a parking space to someone who can do without a car and leaving more for the people who can't.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#222

Post by QuercusMax » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #16

jmyeet wrote: post #7

The amount of money we collectively spend subsidizing driving is utterly insane. Yet every public transit measure is jet with the same tired dogma of “it’ll raise our taxes” or “it will run at a loss”. Street parking tons at a loss. Why is this never brought up? Significant money is spent by the likes of the remaining Koch brothers to fight public transit infrastructure in every city. Yet taking drivers off the road…

The middled/old-aged NIMBYs in the suburbs don't use Uber/Pub-trans so they don't care and don't want to ever vote for it being improved or "taking my tax dollars." They still equate public transportation with being poor and not how millions of people who live IN the city get around, nor how THEY can benefit from being able to come downtown or go to the mountains skiing more frequently. You know who wants tons of par…

I live in Portland, Oregon, and my house has a city bus stop with service every 15 minutes literally around the corner. If you walk 3-5 blocks, you can access 2 more bus lines, and if you're willing to go 10 blocks you can get to half a dozen more. We have light rail (Trimet MAX) and the Portland Streetcar with just over a mile walk. It's one of the reasons we moved where we did. I work for Google, and Google Portland gives me a free unlimited transit pass, as our office is located on the downtown transit mall. I've literally never driven into the office; a 20 minute bus ride with less than a 2 block walk is incredibly nice.

My family takes transit all the time; I have 3 teens old enough to get their licenses and none of them have put much effort into learning how to drive because they can get around well enough using transit.

If you talk to our Baby Boomer neighbors, though, you'd think that the second you step foot on a bus or train you'll immediately be assaulted by violent junkies. We do have a big unhoused problem here (like everywhere) but my neighbors seem to think transit is only for the poor; it's sad, really, as many of them are getting to the age where they really shouldn't be driving.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#223

Post by kube-system » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:52 PM UTC

c22 wrote: post #183

smt88 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA is a disaster for transit and housing, but your numbers aren't a problem on their face. Any car being used will need >1 space at all times: one at home and one wherever it's being parked when its driver has gone somewhere. If you have We need far more parking spaces per car in LA once we consider the millions of people who are driving in the city and live outside of it. As far as housing, we'd have a 100% fully ho…

There are always some cars being driven at any given time, so you could technically get away with even fewer spaces than cars. But the fewer spaces you have the less likely the available ones are near your destination.

You really can't average a wide area though, parking is a highly localized and cyclical problem set. During the night, most people will be at home, and during the day, most people will be at work. Your city will increase in population during the day as commuters from the suburbs commute to work. Events will happen in your city which will cause huge outliers in the demand for spaces.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#224

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:54 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #149

chimeracoder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LA is a disaster for transit and housing, but your numbers aren't a problem on their face. Any car being used will need >1 space at all times: one at home and one wherever it's being parked when its driver has gone somewhere. Actually, those numbers are a problem on their face. They're an illustration of why cars, and societies that are structured around enabling automobile transit as the primary (or even sole) mea…

Why is 3 parking spaces per car inherently unsustainable?

It isn't unsustainable. However it is limiting. That is a lot of space that is 2/3rds empty yet not really usable for anything else. Worse, cars are heavy and so it isn't practical to go vertical with parking spaces (we can/do build parking ramps - but they are a lot more expensive and so few want to pay to park there, and even then there seems to be a limit to how tall you can make them)

Cities are great because of all the different things you can get to. However cars spread the city out, and in this in turn means you can't do as many things. You can still do a lot, but eventually the distance (distances in cities are measured in time not meters!) is unreasonable and so you can't get someplace in your city. Dense cities enable more things. If you just want to go to walmart - so do everyone else so no problem. However if you have a niche interest you may discover not enough people live within range to support a place for your interest even though across the entire city there are enough people.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#225

Post by brewdad » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:54 PM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #171

hughesjj wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not replace some on street parking with a dedicated bus lane and stops for such? Two birds, one stone

It'd be a good start! It'll take a massive increase in public transportation infrastructure, and a long and slow redesign of our cities and how we live to fix the mess the auto-industry has put us in. It's a transition that's long overdue, but the reality of the situation now is that people still need their cars. Making sure that people have something to fall back on before we take their cars away from them or remove…

Many households have more than one car per driver. With WFH many of these cars sit largely unused. We went down to being a one car family over a year ago and it has rarely been an issue. It requires a little bit of planning. "Hey I need the car on Thursday. Does that work for you?" Otherwise, a second car would mostly only get used because "Well, it hasn't been driven in a while".

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#226

Post by reaperman » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:55 PM UTC

kube-system wrote: post #223

c22 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are always some cars being driven at any given time, so you could technically get away with even fewer spaces than cars. But the fewer spaces you have the less likely the available ones are near your destination.

You really can't average a wide area though, parking is a highly localized and cyclical problem set. During the night, most people will be at home, and during the day, most people will be at work. Your city will increase in population during the day as commuters from the suburbs commute to work. Events will happen in your city which will cause huge outliers in the demand for spaces.

Also, townhome rows typically have little to no street parking available because the driveways are so dense. This makes it impossible for friends to come over and park anywhere.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#227

Post by toofy » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:55 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #147

pramsey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, good read and wonderful on the vicious cycle that led to the downtowns of most US cities looking like WWII bombed out zones by 1975.

That's not the cause at all. Extreme minority poverty and the potent bifurcation of incomes, education and wealth in the US is the cause. Parking won't fix any of that realistically. You can push minority poverty to the suburbs, which for example is what France does, however it doesn't solve anything about the bombed out look, it merely redistributes the problem to somewhere else. You can gentrify the cities and push…

as usual, it’s probably a mixture of many things, and poverty is one, property prices is another, and there are certainly many many others.

we (engineering types) have this terrible habit of declaring that it is One Thing when in reality, complex problems are… complicated. shocking, i know. it isn’t a simple math problem with a one answer. human problems are significantly more chaotic and fractal.

i don’t want to imply that we shouldn’t look at these and add our ideas, only that id love to see us lessen our crutches of “You’re wrong, it’s X!” and recognize that others are probably correct as well.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#228

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #149

chimeracoder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LA is a disaster for transit and housing, but your numbers aren't a problem on their face. Any car being used will need >1 space at all times: one at home and one wherever it's being parked when its driver has gone somewhere. Actually, those numbers are a problem on their face. They're an illustration of why cars, and societies that are structured around enabling automobile transit as the primary (or even sole) mea…

Why is 3 parking spaces per car inherently unsustainable?

[deleted]

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#229

Post by BobaFloutist » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:56 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #132

screye wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bike infrastructure means some brick separators and painted lanes. It takes less than a month to build city-wide rudimentary protected bike lines. BRT is similarly quick to implement, if a little more expensive. Remove 1 lane of parking from major downtown roads & replace with a painted BRT lane. Order about 50 buses to run in 1 way loops around the downtown area. Have high frequency BRT between the out-of-downtown p…

> It takes less than a month to build city-wide rudimentary protected bike lines. Citation needed. Maybe a month of actual painting time once you've done all of the planning, but planning the routes and going through all of the approvals and meetings is absolutely not possible in a single month. Not even a single year.

If you do it on every street you don't have to spend any time planning the routes.

Re: U.S. cities opt to ditch their off-street parking minimums

#230

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jan 03, 2024, 7:58 PM UTC

huntertwo wrote: post #164

oh_sigh wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is 3 parking spaces per car inherently unsustainable?

If you think about it, three parking spaces take up way less space than 1 housing unit in LA.

Most housing units will have more than one person, and most of those people have cars. In most cities space dedicated to cars (parking and roads) covers about 50% of all land use. Housing, factories, stores, parks, churches, and the like are the other half.

Note that the above is about land area. Housing units are often stacked vertically, while car parking rarely stacked.